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For my brother, Ben, and his keen editorial pen.
The longer the countdown went, the more the bunker smelled like fear.
The Prelate scowled at the two Jiralhanae looming beside him. One was covered with rust-red hair, and the other with dirty white. Both warriors were so tall that they had to duck their helmeted heads to keep from banging them on the bunker’s low, flat ceiling. The thickly muscled, sharp-toothed Brutes stood still and silent, like monuments to violence. But all male Jiralhanae were prone to pungent pheromones that mirrored their emotions, and now, so close to the activation of the device, these usually fearless creatures’ panicked stench permeated the cramped, dark room.
The Prelate, Tem’Bhetek, wanted to shout a reprimand. He had handpicked the two Jiralhanae for their strength and mental fortitude. And besides: they were adults, certainly mature enough to regulate their pheromones. But Tem held his tongue, partly because he didn’t want to startle the insectile Yanme’e nervously monitoring the device’s final activation sequence, but mostly because the Prelate knew the Jiralhanae weren’t the real cause of his slowly building rage.
As much as the Prelate’s nostrils recoiled at his warriors’ sharp, sour scent, it was the noise filling his lobeless ears that made him truly angry. A noise that rose over the rapid clicking of the Yanme’e’s claws on the luminous glyphs shining through the surface of the bunker’s obsidian walls. A noise that muted the rumble of the device in the test chamber many levels above. A noise so infuriating that the Prelate finally broke his silence with a strangled hiss: “Why would they sing at a time like; this?”
The Minister of Preparation shrugged inside his dark orange robes. His high, thin voice was full of concentration. “We never understood each other. Not really.”
Both the Minister and the Prelate were San’Shyuum, hairless, slick-skinned creatures with elongated necks that thrust forward from between their shoulders. They shared their species’ large, amphibian eyes. But the Prelate’s eyes were two different colors: one dark green and the other deep blue. Considered auspicious in earlier ages, this trait now marked the Prelate as a member of a genetic line that was overbred and out of fashion.
The Minister, Boru’a’Neem, was two decades older than the Prelate, violet-eyed with a pronounced waddle of fleshy sacks that dangled from his chin. The two had the same pale gray skin, but the Minister’s was deeply wrinkled and bunched down his skull and along his neck like the meat of a freshly shelled nut. In the tradition of most San’Shyuum of his age and exalted rank, the Minister sat hunched in a bowl-shaped titanium throne that floated above the floor with the help of embedded anti-gravity units. The Prelate stood on his own two feet, his broad shoulders and wiry arms held tight against his black tunic as he glared past the Minister at a holographic projector integrated into the bunker’s primary control surface.
There, in a flickering pillar of lavender light, were the small-scale images of three Sangheili warriors, stripped of their armor and kneeling with their arms bound behind their backs. The Prelate knew the display was one-way; the Sangheili in the test chamber couldn’t see or hear anything inside the bunker. But their leader, a muscular, middle-aged warrior with light brown skin and bright amber eyes, stared directly at the recording unit, proud and unafraid, as he led his companions in song.
“Do you know the words?” the Minister asked.
“I do not,” replied the Prelate.
“Sangheili, to be sure, but they have so many dialects. Perhaps it’s a battle anthem. . . .” The Minister’s voice trailed off as a line of glyphs scrolled rapidly across the control surface. His fingers fluttered against the intricate symbols, rotating them back and forth to fine-tune the device’s charging sequence. “No matter. This will be their final verse.”
The Sangheili hadn’t sung at first. Indeed, the two younger warriors had bellowed in pain when the Jiralhanae slashed the tendons above their large cloven feet to bring them to their knees, a practical cruelty to keep them from moving too far from the device. The Sangheili leader had said nothing, barely moving his four interlocking jawbones when the Jiralhanae made their cuts. When this stoic Elite refused to fall, the Prelate ordered his Jiralhanae to smash his knees with their armored fists—but, even then, the amber-eyed warrior hadn’t said a word.
It wasn’t until power began to surge to the device, and the younger Sangheili had begun to groan with fear, that their elder finally cleared his throat and started singing. Soon all three were joined in defiant harmony.
The Prelate clenched his fists. I should have ordered my Jiralhanae to cut their throats as well. But the Minister had been clear: the test would be worthless if the Sangheili were already dead when he activated the device.
Near the Minister, the last of the glyphs pulsed and stabilized. The walls of the bunker began to vibrate as the device held its charge. The Jiralhanae growled and the Yanme’e chittered in anticipation as the Minister lifted a single, long finger . . . and gently pressed the static surface of the final glyph.
The Prelate had expected a sound, something spectacularly loud when the device fired. But instead there was a deafening silence; an aural vacuum that seemed to pull every other sound into it. The growling, clicking, singing—even the Prelate’s surprised intake of breath—were sucked out of existence as the holographic view of the test chamber filled with blinding light.
And yet, as the light faded, a ghostly chorus remained. An echo of the Sangheili song rang in the Prelate’s ears for the long minutes it took the Yanme’e to deactivate all the bunker’s warning and containment systems. Then the Minister led them all through a series of thick, saw-toothed shield doors to a gravity lift that whisked them up to the test chamber, where they inspected what remained of the Sangheili.
“Nothing, in fact,” the Minister of Preparation said, carefully inspecting an analysis of the chamber’s air, scrolling up the arm of his throne. “I would say vaporized. But that would mean trace particles remain.” One corner of the Minister’s wide mouth curled into a smile. “They are, simply, gone.”
The Prelate watched as the Yanme’e fluttered on iridescent wings around the device: a ring of marbled onyx, ten meters high and honeycombed with glinting circuits.
The ring stood in the middle of the test chamber, a long room with white, pearlescent walls that angled together high above. This place and everything in it was the creation of the Forerunners: an ancient, vanished race that both the San’Shyuum and Sangheili worshipped as gods—or, rather, used to. For while their shared faith had been the foundation of the Covenant, this millennia-old alliance between the San’Shyuum and Sangheili was recently and irreversibly broken. The device, a miniature version of one of the Forerunners’ seven sacred Halo rings, no longer held any religious significance for the Prelate. Now it was an object to be feared, not revered. And he truly hoped the three Sangheili warriors had felt terror before the end.
“My lord,” the rust-haired Jiralhanae asked the Minister, his gruff voice halting and unsure, “is it possible, perhaps, that the prisoners could have—”
“Their journey was short and led to nowhere,” the Prelate snapped. “Signal the ship and tell them it’s safe to approach. Once we’re aboard, we depart immediately.”
The Jiralhanae shared a dissatisfied glance with his white-haired companion, but they both bowed their heads and retreated from the test chamber across the stretch of floor where the Sangheili used to be. The Prelate noted that even the pools of indigo blood from the Sangheili’s wounds were gone, and the Jiralhanae’s shaggy feet left no prints as they walked the length of the chamber and disappeared into a passage beyond.
“They refuse to understand, no matter how many times I tell them,” the Prelate said.
“Can you blame them?” the Minister replied. “The Jiralhanae’s belief in the Forerunners was stronger than that of anyone in the Covenant. In less than three ages, we lifted them from savagery to starships. They believed—as we all once did—that the Halo rings would open the path to godhood.” He waved a hand over the arm of his throne, blanking the test results. “Do you remember what the Prophet of Truth used to say?”
With as much calm as he could muster, Tem’Bhetek recited one of the deceased Covenant leader’s better-known aphorisms: “There is nothing stronger than the conviction of the newly converted.”
Boru’a’Neem settled deeper into his throne. His reedy voice was tired, but his words still had all the precision of a practiced politician. “Truth said and did many unfortunate things, but he was right about the Jiralhanae. They will do anything you command, so long as they believe. And while this test may have shaken what remains of their faith in the Great Journey, it has proven, without a doubt, the validity of our plan and the clarity of our purpose.”
The Prelate stared hard at the miniature Halo.
Revenge.
In a flutter of waxy wings, the Yanme’e pulled away from the ring. The Prelate could see a large crack in one of its marbled veins where some of the embedded circuits had burned away. Yanme’e were clever, and in swarms even more so, but this damage far exceeded their technical ability. The Drones hovered nervously until the Minister released them with a swift hand signal, and then they buzzed down a wide shaft behind the ring to examine how the Forerunner power systems buried deeper in the installation had weathered the test-firing.
When they had arrived here, many weeks ago, the Minister of Preparation had painstakingly trained the Yanme’e in their tasks. But the truth was not even Boru’a’Neem, a San’Shyuum renowned for his ability to pick apart and repurpose Forerunner relics, truly understood how this particular device worked. Until recently, the Halo rings had been legend—articles of faith, not something anyone in the Covenant had ever seen. It was only after a Halo had been found and activated, briefly, that this installation and others like it had revealed themselves on the Luminaries and other scanning equipment of Covenant deep-space survey ships.
“If only Truth had told me about this installation sooner. . . .” The Minister tugged at one of the many loose threads in his robe. The heavy garment was embellished with platinum brocade that used to dazzle but was now grimy and tattered. They had been on the run ever since the fall of the holy city, High Charity, several months ago. The Minister hadn’t slept for days as he prepared to test-fire the device, and now some of the Prelate’s anger crept into Boru’a’Neem’s voice as he considered the ring with his weary eyes. “I could have transported this prototype to High Charity—brought all the resources of my Sacred Promissory to bear! But that’s all gone now. Wasted.”
The Prelate flinched, seized with a sudden sadness. He heard the faint echo of a different song. . . .
The Minister softened his tone. “Forgive me, Tem’Bhetek. My losses were nothing compared to yours.”
“Many died that day, my lord.”
“But I did not. And for that, I am forever in your debt.”
The Minister dipped his long neck and head, tipping slightly forward in his throne. The Prelate bowed in response, although muscle memory encouraged him to kneel. According to the old Covenant hierarchy, the Minister Boru’a’Neem was many times his better. Tem’Bhetek was a soldier, the Minister’s sworn protector. But after Tem had accomplished their escape from High Charity, Boru’a’Neem had made things clear: they were now partners, with different but equally important parts to play in the execution of their plan.
“Bring the Half-Jaw and his ship to me,” the Minister said. He nudged his throne close to the Prelate, reached up, and placed his hands on the younger San’Shyuum’s shoulders. “And I promise: we will make the Sangheili pay for everything they have done.”
From orbit, Rahnelo looked pristine. While the planet had a thin equatorial band of deep greens and golden browns, it cooled rapidly as it arced toward its poles, and its caps were icy blue. Bathed in the light of its star, the frozen Sangheili colony world sparkled as it spun about its axis. The effect was breathtakingly beautiful, and staring down at Rahnelo from a distance of a few hundred kilometers, it was easy to get distracted. But distraction was exactly what the Half-Jaw wanted.
Since his Phantom dropship had begun its descent, the Half-Jaw, Rtas ‘Vadum, had done everything he could to keep his mind occupied. He double-checked his pilot’s glide path toward a line of craggy peaks on the wintry edge of the northern hemisphere. He ordered scans of the storm that was brewing there, even though he knew the Phantom was rated to withstand far worse hazards. Having exhausted these by-the-book operations and not wanting to become a nuisance to his crew, the Half-Jaw busied himself by watching the storm grow larger in the Phantom’s viewscreens.
For a handful of heartbeats, as the craft nosed into the bright tops of the stratus clouds, the Half-Jaw felt a surge of confidence. You are Sangheili! Born and bred for war. This is what you live for! But then the Phantom broke into the dull gray light beneath the clouds, and his false bravado shattered.
The first evidence of the assault was Rahnelo’s ruined spaceport. Through the snow whipping past the Phantom’s swept-back nose, the Half-Jaw saw launchpads raked by plasma cannons and a hulking orbital transport burst open from the inside, its fuel tanks boiled by sustained laser fire. The port’s smaller craft were slagged inside their hangars, likely before their pilots even had their engines spinning. It was a precise, thorough attack, clearly the work of an experienced foe. But the Half-Jaw knew this was just the beginning.
The broad road from the spaceport to Rahnelo’s largest settlement was cratered by heavy plasma bombardment. Deep pits walked up the frozen flagstones, and near misses had vaporized the ice fields on either side, creating holes of blackened tundra. The craters continued into the settlement, where direct hits had destroyed many of the high-walled family compounds, littering the ground with slate roof tiles, iron structural spars, and foundation stones that had stood for generations.
For the Half-Jaw, it felt as though he was trapped with his eye against some sort of macabre microscope. As the Phantom descended, layers of magnification clicked into place, each one revealing horrific new details. The final lens belonged to the corpses; stark, dark lumps scattered in the snowy streets leading up to the settlement’s keep.
Having been a warrior most of his life, Rtas ‘Vadum thought he had seen the aftermath of war in all its grim variations. During the Covenant’s long campaign against the humans, he had witnessed the destruction of many of their cities. On rare occasions, he had seen Covenant fleets unleash their might on entire human worlds, bathing their planets in plasma fire until they shone like glass. And most recently, Rtas had witnessed High Charity itself fall to the devastating parasite known as the Flood.
But until this moment, the Half-Jaw had never seen the annihilation of a Sangheili world. He had always feared the humans might someday deal a blow like this. But he never imagined he would see one of his species’ settlements savaged by creatures who used to call themselves Covenant.
As his Phantom flared for landing, the Half-Jaw felt unusually heavy inside the silver armor that covered him from head to toe. Rahnelo’s gravity was slightly less than that of the Sangheili homeworld, Sanghelios. But the Half-Jaw’s legs were leaden as he marched down the Phantom’s ramp and into the icy intersection of two wide cobblestone streets. He forced himself to strike a confident pose, his flanged, white-striped helmet held high and his shoulders set against the frigid wind. He hoped the dozen Sangheili warriors forming a perimeter around him wouldn’t see any difference in his demeanor—wouldn’t guess the truth that the Half-Jaw had known for some time but didn’t dare admit to anyone, least of all himself:
I am tired. And I don’t want to fight anymore.
“Cowardice!” The word momentarily stunned the Half-Jaw. But then he realized the Blademaster wasn’t speaking to him. The gold-armored Sangheili stood in the middle of the intersection near an overturned sledge, his fists balled on his hips beside his two inactive energy blades. Years of shouting orders had accustomed Vul ‘Soran to speaking at maximum volume regardless of the situation. And now, even though the elderly warrior’s voice was hoarse and cracked, his words easily carried over the Phantom’s idling hum: “Only the accursed Jiralhanae would attack a world with no defenses!”
The Half-Jaw strode to the Blademaster, snow squealing beneath his armored feet, and appraised the scene around the sledge. A du’nak lay dead, tangled in its lines. The woolly, two-trunked draft animal had pulled the slat-wood sledge into a sharp turn that bent its bronze runners and left it balanced precariously on one side. Spilled baskets of mustard-colored grain lay in a jumbled pile beside the sledge. Nearby were two Jiralhanae corpses: one facedown, the other on its back. The latter figure was headless, and the missing part lay a few meters away, upright in the snow, staring back at its body with a tight-lipped grimace of profound disappointment.
“Not entirely defenseless . . .” the Half-Jaw said, staring at the bodies. He knelt beside the facedown corpse. “Help me move this mess.”
The Jiralhanae were both clad in dark blue, heavy-plate armor. Their shaggy limbs were blood-stiff, frozen at awkward angles. When, after considerable effort, the Half-Jaw and Blademaster finally rolled the corpse onto its back, they discovered the body of a male Sangheili who had been crushed beneath it in the snow.
The dead Sangheili was even older than the Blademaster, probably in his ninth decade. His open eyes were clouded, and his deeply tanned skin was stretched tight across his cheeks. The elder wore no armor, just a long, thick cloak spun from du’nak wool, mottled gray and white, likely shorn from the same animal lying dead beside him. The wool had done little to stop what the Half-Jaw recognized were wounds from Jiralhanae plasma rifles; deep, charred pits in the elder’s chest. But the old Sangheili still held the hilt of an energy blade in one fist. And although the weapon’s patina indicated it was even older than its owner, the blade, expertly wielded, had been more than enough to stop his much larger foes.
“He tangled his du’nak. Flipped his sledge,” the Blademaster said.
The Half-Jaw nodded in agreement. “Made himself some cover, then fought a last stand.”
Now that the second Jiralhanae was on its back, the Half-Jaw could see the wounds from the elder’s energy blade: two crosscut slashes in the armor that wrapped the Jiralhanae’s belly. The metal around the cuts was heated to a rainbow sheen, but there was no blood or spill of viscera such as the Half-Jaw had seen when human soldiers had gotten lucky with their primitive combat knives. The elder’s energy blade had instantly cauterized the flesh it cut. The wounds it made were so clean that they almost looked painless . . . but the Half-Jaw knew from personal experience that this was not true.
As with all Sangheili, the Half-Jaw’s mouth was split vertically and horizontally into four separate mandibles. But the hinged jawbones on the left side of his face were cut almost clean away, the result of his own close call with the energy blade of another Sangheili whose mind had been possessed by the Flood. This was before the parasite’s infestation of High Charity, and even though the wound was almost a year old, it still stung, especially when the Half-Jaw spoke. To avoid the pain, he moved his mouth as little as possible, and as a result his voice was a near-constant growl.
“They came right for him,” the Half-Jaw said. “Bunched up and eager for the kill.”
The Blademaster huffed dismissively at the Jiralhanae. “Fools should have taken their time. Split up, circled ’round.” Then he gave the dead elder a respectful nod. “I hope I’m still that good when I’m that old.”
You are that old, the Half-Jaw almost said. But the jest was as tired as he was, and he let the Blademaster build to his bluster.
“When I find the Jiralhanae chieftain who led this attack,” Vul ‘Soran shouted, his breath steaming in the cold, “by the blood of my father, by the blood of my sons, I swear he will learn what my blades can do!”
The Blademaster was Sangheili-ai, a master swordsman. He had been a fleet champion in his prime, and even as he made the slow slide through middle age, he still humbled younger opponents looking to burnish their reputations with his defeat. But the Blademaster was already in his sixties when the Covenant started fighting the humans, and that long campaign had sapped his strength. Now Vul ‘Soran’s deep blue skin was splotched gray, and even the gilded armor that denoted his master rank had lost its luster. Indeed, the armor was covered with so many dents and abrasions that the Half-Jaw frequently worried about its integrity and had even considered ordering Vul ‘Soran to commission a new set.
But a Sangheili’s armor was his honor, a public record of glorious victories and narrow escapes. Every battle-born imperfection was a mark in the tally of his esteem. And few things short of death could pry him out of it.
The Half-Jaw knew from their recent sparring matches that Vul ‘Soran’s technique with dual energy blades remained flawless. But his second-in-command wasn’t as quick as he used to be and he tired easily. Would the Blademaster have slaughtered these two Jiralhanae? Yes. But could he defeat one of their mighty chieftains in single combat? The Half-Jaw’s ruined jaws twitched with sudden pain. Forgive me, old friend. But those days are long behind you. . . .
“Shipmaster, movement to the north.” The voice crackled in the Half-Jaw’s helmet. He glanced at a second Phantom orbiting overhead, its purple hull easy to spot, even in the whirling snow. “Scans read friendly,” the Phantom’s pilot clarified, and the Blademaster shouted for the perimeter guards to make way. Soon another sledge glided into view, pulled by a single du’nak with yellowed horns that spiraled backward in an illusion of speed, mocking the animal’s deliberate pace.
A Sangheili youth sat on the sledge’s elevated seat, bundled in a glossy black du’nak cloak many sizes too big for its frame. A second Sangheili in a similarly colored cloak and hood strode beside the sledge, holding the du’nak’s bridle in one hand and a double-bladed energy lance in the other. One of the lance’s elongated, diamond-shaped blades glowed cyan hot, lighting a path for the draft animal through the snow. As the sledge neared the Half-Jaw, the Sangheili with the lance gave the bridle a gentle tug and the du’nak lumbered to a stop, venting clouds of steam through its trunks. The animal was exhausted; spit hung in icicles from its whiskered jowls, and its muscular back legs trembled.
“I am the shipmaster of the carrier Shadow of Intent,” the Half-Jaw said. “We received a call for help and—” But before he could finish, the Sangheili with the lance strode between him and the Blademaster, heading straight for the overturned sledge. The newcomer knelt beside the dead elder, lance planted in the snow. For a long time, the only sound was the crackle of the lance’s blade, flash-vaporizing any flakes that blew too close.
“The attack on us was days ago,” the Sangheili finally said. The voice was muffled by the hood—but it was unmistakably female. The Half-Jaw saw her shoulders slump inside her cloak. The weariness he recognized. The anger he didn’t see until she stood, wheeled on him, and snapped in the sharp, clipped cadence of Rahnelo’s Sangheili dialect: “Now what help can you give?”
The Blademaster bristled. “That is no way to address a shipmaster—”
But the Half-Jaw silenced the Blademaster with an upraised hand. “I am truly sorry,” he said. “We came as quickly as we could.”
The female Sangheili threw back her hood. She wore a round-nosed, backswept battle helmet, deep red with delicate gold scrollwork that flashed as bright as her amber eyes. She started to speak, then clenched her jaws tight, which said everything the Half-Jaw needed to know about how fast she thought he should have come.
The young Sangheili meanwhile leaped from the sledge and trudged through the snow to the elder’s corpse, dragging the tails of his coat behind him. “Who is it, sister?”
“The miller, Gol ‘Rham-ee.” The female Sangheili emphasized the honorific at the end of the elder’s name, making sure the Half-Jaw and Blademaster knew that he had once been a Covenant warrior, not just a grinder of grain.
“They killed his du’nak, too?” The boy’s voice cracked between a snarl and a sob. He gave the nearest Jiralhanae a ferocious kick. “I hate them all!” The Jiralhanae’s body barely moved.
“What’s done is done and cannot be undone,” the female said. Then, softening her tone: “Come, let’s take the miller to the keep.”
The sister and brother reached for the elder’s body, and when the Half-Jaw and Blademaster realized what the siblings were doing, they helped them heft it onto the sledge, where more Sangheili corpses had been placed under layers of wool blankets. It was hard to tell how many bodies there were. All were horribly blistered and burned; some were fused together, locked in a final, protective embrace.
“We found them near the craters, on the road to the port,” the youth explained. “They were running for the keep. But the Jiralhanae ship cut them down.”
“What kind of ship?” The Blademaster took an impatient step toward the youth. “Are you certain there was only one?”
The young Sangheili stood his ground, but his eyes went wide with fear. The female put a protective hand across her brother’s chest and shot the Blademaster a withering glance. “All questions come to me,” she said.
This rebuff set the Blademaster’s blood boiling. But it was clear to the Half-Jaw that both brother and sister were still raw from the attack, and the last thing they needed was more demands, however well intentioned, on their already frayed nerves.
“Blademaster, rally the squad,” the Half-Jaw said. Then to the female Sangheili: “We would like to accompany you to the keep and speak with your kaidon.”
The female Sangheili said neither yes nor no. Instead, without a word, she helped her brother climb back aboard the sledge, tugged the du’nak around by its bridle, and then fell into step beside the animal as it plodded back the way it had come, pulling the sledge through its own deep ruts. The Half-Jaw, Blademaster, and their dozen warriors followed, and soon all were tramping through the deepening snow up a gently sloping road past more ruined compounds, the Blademaster barking reminders to check every Jiralhanae corpse they passed. The Half-Jaw and female Sangheili walked together, on either side of the du’nak, heads bowed against an icy wind.
After many silent steps, the Half-Jaw said: “You wear the armor of a warrior.”
“Does that surprise you?”
“No. What else would the daughter of a kaidon be?”
The female flicked her eyes at the Half-Jaw; a glance of respect for an educated guess. On Sanghelios, tradition held that children grew up without knowing their fathers. Instead, they were raised by their uncles and aunts—a system designed to emphasize clan rather than parental loyalty. On colonies such as Rahnelo, where populations were smaller and families tighter knit, the Half-Jaw knew the rules were different.
“I am Tul ‘Juran,” the female said, “first and only daughter of Kaidon Tulum ‘Juranai, captain of his guard and scion of his keep.”
“Rtas ‘Vadum.” The Half-Jaw fumbled the V at the beginning of his surname, which was especially hard to say with missing jaws. Embarrassed, he continued in a deeper growl: “I would speak with your father—ask the kaidon all he knows about the attack, so I can punish those responsible.”
“You can speak to the kaidon,” the Scion said, “but not to my father.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The kaidon . . . rides behind you.”
Had the Half-Jaw been less fatigued, his mind less focused on maintaining the outward appearance of calm authority, he would have immediately understood. But it took him a few more steps, crunching through the snow, to work out the answer. One of the corpses on the sledge . . . ? No . . . the kaidon is her brother. Which was, at first, difficult to believe.
Kaidons were mature masters of their keeps, rulers of entire provinces. The youth on the sledge was less than a decade old. Pale, protective scales still hung from his neck, an evolutionary holdover from the days when Sangheili parents used to carry their offspring in their toothy jaws to keep them safe from predators as they hunted and gathered across Sanghelios’s coastal plains.
“Most of my brothers died in the war,” Tul ‘Juran continued. Rahnelo, like most Sangheili colony worlds, had seen heavy recruitment during the Covenant’s long fight against humanity. “The two who remained joined my father in his final charge against the Jiralhanae. That was three days ago. We haven’t seen any of them since.”
Which meant the youth on the sledge was the last of the kaidon’s sons. Although the Scion was older, well into her second decade, she was female. And according to Sangheili tradition, no female could ever be kaidon. Mistress of her keep, ruler of her kaidon husband, yes. But never owner and heir to her father’s lands and other possessions.
If the Scion’s youngest brother had also died or gone missing in the Jiralhanae assault, Rahnelo’s lesser kaidons would soon be vying for the Scion’s inheritance, attempting to secure her hand in marriage, either to themselves or to one of their own sons. If the Scion refused, she could fight, and the annals of Sangheili history were filled with brave and steadfast kaidon daughters who did exactly that. Some held out for years. A few, such as the Gray Maiden of Konar, had lived out their lives in perpetual siege, fortified in their keeps, aided by loyal vassals and the foolishness of rival kaidon suitors who wasted decades fighting among themselves.
As the Scion strode through the snow, the Half-Jaw caught glimpses of her armored torso and legs as they split her cloak. The red metal bands were spattered with Jiralhanae blood, and the Half-Jaw knew in an instant that she would defend her honor and her keep just as fiercely against any male Sangheili challengers.
“I’ve been counting corpses,” the Half-Jaw said. “You fought off at least two companies of Jiralhanae as well as their ship—”
“A light cruiser,” the Scion interjected. “It bombed the port and bastion compounds, then it dropped its infantry. . . .” She lowered her voice so her brother wouldn’t hear. “The Jiralhanae swarmed the streets, killing any Sangheili who stood their ground. We sallied out from the keep to save those we could. When the Jiralhanae drew close, we held the gates. But soon there were no more stragglers, and my father ordered me inside—up to the walls to direct the guards’ fire. Then the kaidon charged, my two brothers at his side, straight for the Jiralhanae’s leader.” The Scion took a deep breath, then swallowed anger and frustration. “We had their leader in our sights, but he moved too quickly—faster than anything I’ve ever seen. And then . . . he was gone.”
The Blademaster had marched up to join the Half-Jaw during the Scion’s tale and now said: “I’ve never heard of a Jiralhanae chieftain who could move like that. How large was his hammer?”
The Scion spat her words like bitter fruit. “Their leader was San’Shyuum.”
The Half-Jaw and Blademaster shared a surprised glance, and then listened, rapt, as Tul ‘Juran described what she had seen.
A San’Shyuum without a throne. A warrior in black armor who had evaded her keep’s finest marksman and disappeared into the smoke of the burning settlement. An enemy that could have reignited its cruiser’s plasma cannons and vaporized the keep but instead had pulled its ship from orbit and disappeared almost as quickly as it came.
“A Prelate,” growled the Half-Jaw.
“It can’t be,” the Blademaster said. “They all died at High Charity.”
“Evidently not.”
The du’nak bellowed with relief as the street finally crested and the keep appeared through the driving snow: a fortress with soaring walls of rough-hewn granite built between two mountain spurs—the farthest fingers of a line of jagged, snowcapped peaks. The keep’s iron gates were open, and small groups of Sangheili settlers and keep guards were gathered outside the walls, near the smoldering remains of a large funeral pyre. With all these eyes upon them, the Half-Jaw and his warriors unloaded the corpses from the sledge. Everyone waited in silence for the bodies to catch fire on the warm heap of ash and bone. The oily smoke rose, twisting in the wind, and the pyre consumed the last of its sorry fuel.
“Where are you going?” the Half-Jaw asked the siblings as they turned their tired du’nak back onto the road.
“To find my father and my brothers,” the young kaidon said. “To bring them to the fire.”
“If you haven’t found them by now, you never will,” the Half-Jaw said, as kindly as he could. “At least, not here.”
“What do you mean?” asked Tul ‘Juran.
“If a Prelate came here just to kill, this keep would be a pit in the ground.”
This observation pricked the pride of the keep guards in the crowd, who grumbled among themselves. But the Scion’s eyes grew wide with a hope she hadn’t dared to consider. “If this . . . Prelate spared the keep. If he let us live . . .”
“. . . He might have taken prisoners,” the Half-Jaw said.
The Blademaster locked his arms across his chest. “And why, by the balls on every blasted Prophet’s chin, would he have done that?”
Which was a very good question. But the Half-Jaw had no answer.
Tul ‘Juran tossed back her cloak, baring her armored chest, and spoke loud enough for all to hear. “I invoke my right, as Scion of this keep, to free my kaidon from his imprisonment and take revenge upon his captors!” She stepped to the Half-Jaw and bowed her head. “For this, I humbly beg passage on your ship and enlistment in your crew.”
The Half-Jaw heard nothing humble in the Scion’s voice, however. Her words were steel determination, and the right she had invoked was ages old and just as rigid. . . .
The entire recorded history of Sanghelios could accurately be described as one long war for control of its thousands of familial keeps. Even after the Sangheili built interstellar spaceships and found other foes, kaidons still fought bitterly, and in these skirmishes, one kaidon sometimes captured another—a terrible fate, not just for a kaidon, but for all Sangheili warriors who believed that being stripped of armor and denied a noble death in battle was the ultimate humiliation. A kaidon’s captor never intended to release his prisoner. Instead, the vanquished would languish in their cells, a mockery to themselves and all their kin—unless one of their bloodline invoked the “right of release” and was then bold and clever enough to see it through.
These liberations were the stuff of legends. But the most famous, and the one the Half-Jaw knew best, was the ballad of Kel ‘Darsam, First Light of Sanghelios.
Kel ‘Darsam was a warrior renowned for his bravery and cunning. In the earliest eras of Sangheili history, before the first Forerunner relics were discovered and these new gods conquered the old, Kel was a beloved member of the Sangheili pantheon—a demigod born to a mortal mother and a divine father who was none other than Urs himself, lord of all other Sangheili gods and namesake of the largest and most sacred of Sanghelios’s three suns.
In the days when Urs ruled Sangheili spiritual life, the seas that covered much of their home world were still vast and mysterious and filled with monstrous, semi-mythical creatures. Kel ‘Darsam was famous for slaying many of these: the Sand Dwellers of Il’ik; the many-mouthed Watcher of the Lonely Harbor; the nine serpents of Dur’at’dur, whose endless thrashing was thought to cause those islands’ deadly currents. Indeed, Kel was so keen on ridding the seas of their terrors that he had little interest in becoming kaidon, a position he gladly left to his uncle and mentor, Orok ‘Darsam.
During one of many wars to defend his keep, Orok was captured by a powerful sea lord and rival kaidon, Nesh ‘Radoon, and Kel dutifully invoked the right of release. Without a navy of his own, Kel was forced to sail alone, under cover of night and through a line of squalls, to the sheer walls of his rival’s keep. After scaling the walls and slaying the keep’s best swordsmen, Kel and Orok raced to make their escape. But as Kel perched on the wall, preparing to dive to safety, a spear struck him in the back. Mortally wounded, Kel tumbled to the waves far below.
Oddly, the Half-Jaw knew, there were two versions of the ballad: one in which Nesh ‘Radoon threw the spear that killed Kel ‘Darsam, and another in which the spear was instead thrown by his uncle, Orok. In the latter version, the entire capture was a ruse—a trap designed by Orok, who was deeply fearful that Kel would someday tire of slaughtering monsters and decide to claim the title of kaidon for his own.
But both versions of the legend had the same ending.
As Kel ‘Darsam fell, dying, toward the waves, he was touched by the first rays of Urs as the god-star rose over the edge of the sea. In this moment, Kel was transformed into pure light; an eternal reflection of his divine father’s pride and grief.
After the founding of the Covenant, many of the old myths faded away. But the Sangheili continued to sing the ballad of Kel ‘Darsam to their sons and daughters, just as they taught them that the Sangheili word kel means “light (that dances on the waves).”
“Ridiculous!” the Blademaster said, glowering at the Scion. “I’ve never heard of a female invoking the right of release. And I know for certain that no female has ever been—or ever will be—a warrior on a ship!”
The Scion glared right back at the Blademaster. “That is not your decision.”
She was right, the Half-Jaw knew. As shipmaster, it was his decision. And, looking at the Scion’s determined eyes, he was surprised to realize he had already made it.
“You can’t be serious!” the Blademaster sputtered after the Half-Jaw had approved the Scion’s enlistment and pulled his second-in-command aside for a private conference. “This is unprecedented—a breach of the most fundamental rules of recruitment! And more than that, it’s an affront to honor and tradition!”
As Vul ‘Soran continued his impassioned protest, the second Phantom landed and deployed its troops: two squads of silver-armored Sangheili rangers—and one Unggoy. This stout, bandy-legged creature was also clad in ranger silver, but unlike his Sangheili comrades, he wore a cylindrical tank across his shoulders and a breathing mask on his face. The Unggoy was unusually tall for his species, and the spiny top of his crustaceous head nearly reached the shoulders of the Sangheili. Typically, Unggoy were the subservient, lesser members of a Covenant military unit. But when this Grunt gave a curt hand signal, the Sangheili rangers formed ranks and stood at attention. For he was the rangers’ leader, and they obeyed him without question.
“I’m sorry you feel otherwise, but she is coming with us,” the Half-Jaw said to the Blademaster. “That’s my final decision.” Then, directing Vul’s gaze to the Unggoy ranger, Rtas noted in a softer tone, “Besides, if you can get used to that, you can get used to anything.”
The Half-Jaw and his troops stayed long enough to help the Rahnelo settlers drag the Jiralhanae corpses from their streets, pile them into the large craters on the road to the spaceport, and then bury them with rubble. This solution came at the suggestion of the Scion’s brother. The settlers would not dignify the Jiralhanae with a funeral pyre, but were content, in the years to come, to let their du’nak trample their attackers’ graves as they hauled their loads to and from the port. It was a wise first decision for the young kaidon, the Half-Jaw thought, and although he was undoubtedly bereft, the Scion’s brother stood strong as his sibling departed the keep, taking only her armor and her lance and leaving a promise to return.
By then the storm had passed, and when the two Phantoms rocketed skyward, Shadow of Intent was bright above them, its long, hooked prow glinting in Rahnelo’s reflected light. From the bottom, the mighty assault-carrier looked like two iridescent blue teardrops, one larger than the other, joined at their tapered tails. The ship was a little more than five kilometers long and nearly two kilometers wide in the thickest part of its aft section, which housed the reactors for its maneuvering engines and slipspace drive. Heavily armored and bristling with plasma cannons, Shadow of Intent looked invulnerable. But only from afar.
On approach to the primary hangar, the Half-Jaw could see all the damage the venerable carrier had endured: dull spots in its shimmering metal skin where human missiles’ thermonuclear detonations had burned through the carrier’s energy shields and seared its hull; blackened gaps in rows of point-defense laser batteries where their former enemy’s Longsword fighters had gotten lucky shots; hastily patched penetrations from MAC rounds, the hypersonic magnetically accelerated slugs that were the humans’ most powerful naval weapons.
On top of all this damage were scars from Shadow of Intent’s attempt to blockade High Charity. There the carrier had traded plasma torpedoes with San’Shyuum vessels desperate to flee the Flood, and a particularly close call had left a bubbled streak on the starboard side of the carrier’s prow.
Shadow of Intent looked as tired as the Half-Jaw felt. And a few months ago, when the Arbiter, Thel ‘Vadam, had offered him the mission to take the carrier far away from Sanghelios, Rtas had gladly accepted.
When the Covenant shattered, not all Sangheili had abandoned the idea of Forerunner divinity. After the fall of High Charity and the cessation of hostilities against the humans, tensions had flared between those Sangheili who still revered the Forerunners and the Arbiter’s faction, which did not.
The Arbiter and the Half-Jaw had been rivals for a time, after the failure to keep the humans from destroying Halo was laid at the Arbiter’s feet. But during the Schism, when the Prophets removed the Sangheili from command positions in the Covenant military and replaced them with the Jiralhanae, the two had forged a tight bond in the sudden fight against their common foes. The Arbiter was now the widely accepted leader of the Sangheili, but as the threat of Sangheili civil war increased, the Arbiter had asked Rtas ‘Vadum to pilot Shadow of Intent away from Sanghelios. The assault carrier was presently the last operational ship of its type in the Sangheili fleet—a hugely powerful vessel that the Arbiter wanted out of reach of other shipmasters whose loyalties weren’t as certain.
So the Half-Jaw had gathered his crew and charted a course for the sparsely populated frontier of the former Covenant Empire. It was here, not far from Rahnelo, that the Half-Jaw had hoped he and his warriors could finally rest and recuperate. The Half-Jaw sighed. It was good while it lasted. . . .
Shadow of Intent’s hangar had room for scores of Phantom dropships and Seraph fighters. But now the Half-Jaw’s two Phantoms had the cavernous space all to themselves. Most of the missing craft were casualties of war. The others Rtas had abandoned; he simply didn’t have the crew to man them. Indeed, there were fewer than two hundred Sangheili on Shadow of Intent, a small fraction of the carrier’s capacity, just enough to keep the ship’s most important systems running. But enough to win a fight against a Prelate?
The Blademaster had given his own answer to this question during their flight back to the carrier: Shadow of Intent would have the upper hand against a single cruiser, even with its reduced crew; this Prelate was clearly dangerous, but hitting an essentially defenseless colony wasn’t the same as naval combat; they had the advantage in both weapon strength and tonnage. It was a reasoned response. But the Half-Jaw wanted a second opinion, and so after the Phantoms landed, he sought out the Unggoy.
Near the aft wall of the hangar was a line of floor-mounted methane-recharge stations. These clusters of tanks and hoses were designed to service dozens of Unggoy, but Stolt was alone. In fact, he was the only Unggoy—and the only non-Sangheili—in the Half-Jaw’s crew.
But if Stolt was lonely for his own kind, he never showed it. The Unggoy seemed as relaxed as always, his back resting against the recharge station, his hard-shelled arms hanging loosely at his sides. Like the rest of his body, Stolt’s thick forearms were dotted with stubby spines, evidence of his species’ crustacean ancestry. The ranger leader’s small, dark eyes betrayed no emotion as he listened to Rtas explain their new mission. And when his shipmaster was done speaking, the Unggoy simply scratched the seal of his mask with a barnacled finger and stared appraisingly at the Scion.
The female Sangheili had disembarked from her Phantom and was standing in a line with the other male Sangheili warriors, her red armor standing out against their silver. Holding her lance at her side, Tul ‘Juran pointedly ignored their curious glances and muttered assessments and was the first to comply when the Blademaster shouted for them all to shut their jaws and come to attention.
The Half-Jaw knew that Stolt had faced similar scrutiny when he had joined Shadow of Intent’s complement of rangers during the human war. Rangers were an elite force, trained in the demanding art of zero-gee combat. The humans had called them “ship killers,” and for good reason: many human vessels had perished when Covenant rangers breached their hulls and tore them apart from the inside out. Unggoy rangers weren’t unheard of, but they were rare. And at first, most Sangheili on Shadow of Intent had regarded this Unggoy as a Grunt who would never be their equal.
They were wrong.
Stolt had survived encounters with human soldiers that saw many of his comrades fall. When he wasn’t battling the enemy, he outfought any Sangheili who sparred against him, enduring their melee strikes until they tired, and then pummeling them into submission with his chitinous fists and feet. After a chance encounter with one of the humans’ fearsome Spartans, in which the Unggoy wounded the enhanced human so grievously that it was forced to withdraw, even the Blademaster approved Stolt’s promotion to ranger leader.
“So then,” the Half-Jaw said after the Unggoy’s tank was full and he had pulled away from the station with a wet pop and hiss, “do you believe we can kill a Prelate?”
Stolt kept his beady eyes on the Scion as he savored a long breath from his tank. “I think,” he said, his gravelly voice rumbling through his mask, “we’ll need all the help we can get.”
In the Prelate’s dreams, his return to High Charity was always the same.
The holy city’s simulated star had dimmed, giving the dome’s floating towers a warm, sunset glow. Barges draped with colored streamers and fragrant flowers filled the air, except for the space around the bone-white Forerunner Dreadnought at the center of the dome. Here there were fireworks; explosions of celebratory glyphs that formed phrases such as: A CHILD FOR THE AGES! or BLESSED WITH TWINS! or SHE HAS HER MOTHER’S NOSE (THANK THE GODS!). Some of these were fiery proclamations about individual San’Shyuum’s reproductive potency that, despite their artful innuendo, sorely tested the Committee of Concordance’s laws on public decency.
But on this night, all was permitted. San’Shyuum children were rare, and when the birthing season reached its peak, all of High Charity rejoiced. Even the dour Sangheili joined in the festivities. Above the Dreadnought and below the star, Sangheili Banshee fighter craft flew aerobatics in tight formation. Watching from the barges or temporary grandstands cantilevered out from their towers, tipsy San’Shyuum revelers would roar their approval and pound their fists against their anti-grav thrones whenever the pilots demonstrated particular daring.
This picture of High Charity at its finest—bright and bawdy and hopeful—spread out above the Prelate as he exited the stalk and flew up into the dome.
Viewed from the outside, High Charity looked like a mushroom that, hidden in the deep black night of interstellar space, had grown to shocking size. The cap that formed the city’s dome was hundreds of kilometers in diameter. The stalk was longer than the dome was wide and bristled with dry docks and manufacturies that served fleets of capital ships and countless smaller vessels. Novice shipmasters were often daunted by the arcane procedures and quasi-religious communication protocols that governed flight operations in and around the holy city. But Tem’Bhetek had logged plenty of approaches, and after many months away from home, he was quick to dock his cruiser in its bay and disembark the moment the gantries latched.
Like most of his voyages, this last one had been wrapped in secrecy, and communications to and from his cruiser had been tightly constrained. But his wife had gotten one message through: We two are now three. And every day away from High Charity after that had seemed like an eternity.
The Prelate had instantly understood her cryptic message’s meaning. He was desperate to see his newborn child, as any first-time parent would be. But Tem’s urgency was amplified by the fact that he had never thought he would be a father.
San’Shyuum society was incredibly strict about which genes passed from one generation to the next, and the Prelate’s bloodline had fallen out of favor ages ago due to overbreeding. He was officially listed on the Roll of Celibates, and once designated as such, it was impossible to be removed . . . or so the Prelate thought. After he had been selected to enter the Sacred Promissory—after the Minister of Preparation had used the Promissory’s Forerunner machines to alter his genes and enhance his mind and body—the Prelate was able to petition for his removal from the Roll and was matched with a suitable female: Yalar’Otan’Elat. And she was more than he had ever hoped for.
Yalar was beautiful, long-necked, and delicately limbed. While her family members were wealthy owners of mining concerns on a handful of Covenant worlds, Yalar was noble and humble in equal measure—a rarity in San’Shyuum high society, which was rife with snobbery and striving. Tem fell instantly in love with her clever tongue and guarded smile. But over time, what devoted him body and soul was that Yalar accepted the three things that he could never be: home more often than he was away; honest about his ongoing service to the Minister; and confident that the experimental alterations to his genes wouldn’t somehow ruin their chances for a healthy child.
Yalar accepted all of these conditions. But she was anything but demure.
When her pregnancy was confirmed, Yalar had refused confinement, a precaution embraced by most expectant San’Shyuum mothers. Instead, long after her belly began to swell, Yalar continued her work in High Charity’s lower districts, ensuring the Unggoy, Kig-Yar, and other “lesser” species (a categorization she rejected) had all the resources and services they were owed as loyal members of the Covenant. She was an irrepressible champion of the alliance’s ideals, and the Prelate knew their child would thrive even if it inherited just a small part of its mother’s spirit.
As the Prelate soared higher into the dome, so did his anticipation. After years of secrecy and sacrifice, he was about to reap the only rewards he had ever wanted: a child, a family. He maxed power to his anti-grav belt and sped toward a future that was as bright as the fireworks bursting above him. . . .
And then the nightmare began, like it always did, with a sphere of shimmering light that appeared near the apex of the dome.
The sphere remained stable for long as it took High Charity’s citizens to look up from their revels and draw a collective breath. Then the slipspace portal imploded with a thunderous crack louder than any firework. It rang High Charity like a bell, jerked the Prelate from his flight of fancy, and reminded him of the real reason for his haste:
Tonight does not have to be the same. Tonight I can save them!
Out of the collapsing portal a ship emerged that the Prelate instantly recognized as a human frigate. The lightly armored vessel was essentially a MAC cannon sandwiched between two engine pods. What frigates lacked in defensive capability, however, they made up for in speed and agility. So even though it emerged from slipspace at high velocity, the frigate was able to pull up hard and bank to avoid the wall of the dome. Then, in a cacophony of crumbling stone and wrenching metal, the ship buried itself up to its engines in one of the floating towers. It hung there, shuddering and burning, like a flaming arrow plunged into the heart of the Covenant.
In the stunned silence that followed, the Prelate wanted to scream: Go, you fools! Flee the city! While there’s still time! But in this nightmare his voice failed him, as it always did, and he watched in mute horror as the ruined vessel unleashed its horrible cargo.
A thick cloud of Flood spores spewed through the rents in the frigate’s hull, flowed around the damaged tower, and quickly spread to the two adjacent spires, swallowing them whole. The ship’s engines sputtered inside the miasmic cloud, giving it a dim and dreadful pulse—a semblance of life that turned the Prelate’s blood cold.
Suddenly the city snapped out of its stupor. Celebrations ended in a rolling panic as the Flood cloud spread both ways around the dome. San’Shyuum abandoned their towers, crowded onto barges, or simply flung themselves toward the stalk and its waiting ships, trusting their anti-grav thrones and belts to break their fall. Many who moved too slowly disappeared into the spores. The Sangheili Banshees broke formation and began strafing the Flood cloud, but their firepower was woefully inadequate, and soon the Prelate found himself fighting upward against a tide of screaming, wild-eyed evacuees.
The tower Yalar had picked for them was old; a black marble obelisk with crenellated balconies that was one of the first carved from the mammoth hunk of the San’Shyuum homeworld that served as the dome’s foundation. In a habitat where the status of one’s living quarters was determined by three criteria—size, altitude, and proximity to the Forerunner Dreadnought—their cramped, low-slung tower near the wall of the dome was decidedly low-class. But while they could have lived somewhere better, Yalar wanted to be near to her work in the lower districts, and they both soon realized there were advantages to close quarters. The tower’s tight hallways and narrow gravity lifts gave them license to press close together in full view of their neighbors, touch and whisper and begin the tender intimacies of their reunions before they reached the privacy of their chambers.
But now the Prelate cursed their tower’s claustrophobic conditions as he was forced to lean power to his anti-grav belt and decelerate into its low-ceilinged entry hall. His feet grazed the hall’s polished stone floor as he swung to avoid a trio of San’Shyuum in their thrones, so laden down with personal possessions that they didn’t see him coming. Having avoided this collision, he angled up a ramp to the gravity lifts, chose a tube that served his apartment, and boosted into its shimmering field. Ten, twenty floors went by in a blur. But then the whole tower shuddered, slamming the Prelate against the tube’s glassy walls. Sliding and tumbling upward, he almost missed his apartment, but managed a wild thrust with his arms, caught a railing, and levered himself into the entry passage.
“Yalar!” the Prelate shouted as he palmed the lock on the apartment’s door and shouldered through before it split fully open. “Yalar, I’m here!” He cut power to his belt, landed hard on his feet, and sprinted across the bare floor of their common room, hurdling a low wooden table, and then knifed through a curtain strung with garnet beads into the triangular hall that led to their sleeping chamber. A few steps into the hall, and the tower shook again—more violently this time. Motes of lavender light burning in alcoves that ran the length of the hall sputtered out, and suddenly the Prelate was in total darkness.
This was the moment in his nightmare when Tem’Bhetek became fully aware he was dreaming. All that came before—the fireworks, the frigate, the Flood—these were inevitable. But now, with the tower trembling around him, Tem was conscious of his ability to alter what came next. He held his breath and listened . . . and heard a mewling in the dark.
The Prelate stepped toward the muffled cries, hands groping along the walls. As he entered the sleeping chamber, he stopped and let his vision adjust to a wan light seeping through the curtains drawn across the balcony window. Slowly the shape of his wife resolved, sitting in the middle of their padded sleeping pallet. Yalar was draped in a diaphanous pale yellow nursing gown. Their child was cradled in her arms, swaddled in a copper blanket. As the babe redoubled its wail, Yalar began to sing:
This path, where does it lead?
Take my hand, walk with me.
Into the light, forever free?
Take my hand, walk with me . . .
It was an old San’Shyuum lullaby, and as Yalar hummed its sweet melody, the Prelate’s mind raced with all the things he’d said before—all the ways he’d tried in previous dreams to get his wife to leave their bedchamber before it was too late. But as always, the nightmare didn’t wait. And before he’d landed on something new to say, Yalar stopped singing, raised her large, long-lashed eyes, and said:
“We waited for you.”
“I . . . I was close.” The Prelate’s voice was ragged. “Just outside the city.”
Yalar lowered her gaze to the child crying in her arms. “But you weren’t here.”
The Prelate felt a change in the air; something old and patient and powerful stretching out from the deepest shadows of the room. “Please, my love.” He stepped forward, hands outstretched. “Come with me. Now.”
But Yalar shrank back into the folds of her gown and began to sing again:
This path, where does it lead . . . ?
A single Flood spore wafted past the Prelate. It took all his strength not to reach out and crush its ragged spines, its ugly, pulsing core. He had tried once before, but fighting back had only accelerated what was to come.
“We can leave this place,” Tem said. “You and me and . . .” He looked blankly at the child. We two are now three, Yalar had said in her message. But she had told him nothing else—not revealed the gender of their child.
“Our son? Our daughter?” Yalar said. “I wanted it to be a surprise. But now”—she choked back a sob—“you will never even know its name.”
The Prelate winced, trying to keep his own emotions in check. “I fought through the Sangheili ships. I made it to the stalk.” But then his rage began to build, just as it always did. “But the dome was overrun! And the Minister told me that the Flood—!”
“Boru’a’Neem!” Yalar said with disgust. Her head rose up on her long neck like a serpent preparing to strike. “You went wherever he ordered you to go! Did whatever he needed you to do!” Her voice plunged to a whisper and then stepped back to a scream. “But when we really needed you . . . You. Weren’t. Here!”
Their child loosed a full-throated wail, wriggling its little limbs inside the blanket. Yalar rocked it close to her chest and continued:
Take my hand, walk with me . . . !
But she was out of tune now and frantic. Her body shook. She began to cough. Arms trembling, Yalar thrust their baby toward the Prelate. “Take it, Tem!” she gasped. “Take it and go—!”
Then her lips exploded open, releasing a cloud of Flood spores.
The first time the Prelate had this dream, this was the moment he woke. Eyes wide and screaming. But he’d since learned to fight the urge to wake—coaxed his body to release some of the Promissory-implanted chemicals designed to enhance his combat capabilities to keep him focused on the dream. Each time the nightmare came, he was able to stay submerged a little longer. Like a diver with limited air, he willed his body to relax into the depths of his despair. . . .
Tem’Bhetek now snatched the wailing child out of his wife’s arms and leapt away as pulsing green boils rose on Yalar’s neck and shoulders. Flood tendrils, slick and sharp, burst from these sores, tore through her gown, and coiled around her body. She pitched backward onto their pallet, thrashing her arms and legs and shrieking as the parasite burrowed into her brain.
Just then, the balcony window shattered. Light stabbed through the curtains as a Phantom dropship hovering outside opened fire with its nose-mounted turret. The Prelate rolled to the floor and curled around his child, shielding it from the plasma bolts as they seared overhead and burned into the bedchamber’s walls. Even before the firing stopped, the Prelate heard the clang of armored feet, the telltale crack and sizzle of activating energy blades. He rose to find three Sangheili in silver armor circling the pallet, eyeing his Flood-stricken wife.
“Don’t touch her!” the Prelate roared, rising to his feet.
The Sangheili snapped their heads in his direction. The one closest to the Prelate snarled and raised its blade. . . .
But right as it swung to cut the Prelate down, tendrils shot out from Yalar’s body and wrapped around the Sangheili’s sword arm, stopping it mid-swing. More of the muscular Flood fibers whipped around the Sangheili’s neck. Then Yalar flung herself backward, pulling the warrior with her, using whatever part of her mind that remained in her control to try to keep her family safe.
But it wasn’t enough.
The other Sangheili went to work, slashing Yalar with their blades until there was nothing left but sizzling flesh and bloody cloth. Feet locked to the floor, Tem loosed a guttural, wordless cry that ended in a wail as the Sangheili prodded Yalar’s remains with the two-pronged tips of their blades.
Then the swordsmen came for him.
In the Prelate’s dream, the Sangheili’s eyes began to glow bright as their blades as they slid through the slanting shadows cast by the tattered curtains. Their limbs stretched, and they flowed around him like quicksilver, rattling their bony jaws.
“I’ll kill you!” The Prelate squared his stance, cradled his child with one hand, and made a fist with the other. “I will kill every last one of you!”
Then his baby laughed. The Prelate looked down into the infant’s eyes; one blue, one green, just like his own. The child gurgled a string of happy nonsense words.
Yalar’s voice echoed in the shadows:
Into the light, forever free . . .
And Tem felt a surge of hope: Tonight is not the same. Tonight I will save my child!
He activated his anti-grav belt and launched himself through the cordon of Sangheili, twisting to avoid their blades. As the Prelate hurtled through the window frame, the Phantom’s turret tracked him and opened fire. But Tem was already halfway into a dive that took him under the Phantom’s belly, beyond its field of fire. Flying with his back to the lower districts, the Prelate stared at his reflection as it rippled across the Phantom’s polished hull. Stay asleep, just a little longer. . . . Then he was up behind the dropship, where he maxed power to his belt and shot toward the holy city’s star.
The atmosphere was thick with spores now. The other towers, the arched walls of the dome—everything except the star’s bright disc had disappeared into the murk. Two empty barges appeared above the Prelate, trailing limp streamers and shedding flowers. He jerked hard right to avoid a collision. A tower somewhere off to his left groaned as its anti-grav systems failed. Tem waited for the crack and boom of exploding stone as the tower hit the lower districts. But instead there was only a wet, muffled crunch. He looked down and saw dark shapes moving in the sea of spores below: tendrils winding back and forth, like animals tracking his scent.
Then the spores began to thin, and the Prelate burst through the top of the cloud, no more than a kilometer below the simulated star. This close, he could clearly see how the illusion worked—how the star was really just a broad disc of many overlapping energy fields that filled a hole in the apex of the dome wide enough to accommodate the Forerunner Dreadnought, should the San’Shyuum ever need to move it. Viewing platforms hung around the rim of the disc, and the Prelate knew these were linked to passages through High Charity’s hull, emergency shuttle bays, and, finally, escape from the nightmare. You’re close! Closer than you’ve ever been before! Tem willed his belt to lift him higher, faster. . . .
A Flood tendril slashed up from below, striking him across the arms and pulling his child from his chest. The little bundle tumbled down and out of reach, a loose corner of its copper blanket fluttering behind it. The Prelate spun head over heels, kicking the tendril aside, and dove after his child, following its cries as it careened toward the undulating clouds of spores. An instant before the child disappeared, Tem caught it by its blanket. Then he arched his neck and spine and, straining against the gee-forces, climbed once again toward the star.
The child was beside itself. There was no laughter now, only tears. The little creature thrashed its arms against the Prelate’s chest. He held the infant tight, but this only made it more upset.
It screamed, loud enough to jar Tem half awake. He shut his eyes, took a deep breath . . . and sang.
There is a path, where does it lead?
Take my hand, walk with me!
Into the light, forever free?
Take my hand—!
But before he could finish the verse, tremendous spouts of Flood biomass rose from the clouds; pulsing stalks of half-consumed flesh; grotesque monuments to the holy city’s millions of devoured souls. Tendrils sprouted from these stalks, crisscrossing the air above the Prelate. He tried to maneuver through the gruesome thicket, but the Flood lashed around him, trapping his legs, his chest, his child.
Tem’Bhetek strained his anti-grav belt well past its operating limits. The device’s lifting pods buzzed a warning, growing hot and heavy on his hips. . . .
And then, through the fields of the simulated star, the Prelate saw a ship. A gleaming vessel with a hooked prow, the pride of the Sangheili fleet—Shadow of Intent, maneuvering into position above the holy city. For most Covenant in need of rescue, seeing this assault carrier so close would be a profound relief. At first, even the Prelate’s heart leapt. But his hope shattered as soon as he saw the carrier prepare to fire the plasma fountain in its prow.
“No!” the Prelate shouted. “We’re still alive, you Sangheili bastards—!” But the rest of the curse died in his throat as Flood tendrils coiled around his neck and plunged into his mouth. Tem bit down, trying to sever the fleshy cords as they slid rapidly past his teeth. But the Flood held his jaws open, keeping him trapped in a gurgling rictus of rage.
The capacitating torus of Shadow of Intent’s plasma fountain quavered as it built its charge. Targeting vanes irised into position around the magnetized muzzle, preparing to direct the superheated gases already flooding the breech. There was no sound when the fountain lit, but High Charity rumbled as a pillar of white-hot fire struck the holy city’s star, obliterated its fields, and then lanced into the dome. The Flood clouds ignited with a roar. A wall of pressure and heat rushed toward the Prelate. He struggled in the Flood’s grip, his child screeching in his arms, but just as the wall hit—
The Prelate fully woke, his ears ringing with the insistent wail of an alarm that told him his cruiser had successfully made a slipspace exit.
Tem lay on his back upon his cabin’s narrow pallet, his black tunic wet with sweat and plastered to his skin. As his heart pounded in his chest, keeping time with the alarm, he felt a Flood tendril slither along his neck. He reached to grab it . . . but of course there was nothing there.
Balling his fists into his eyes and closing his mouth to mute his rage, the Prelate screamed. He had gone deeper into the nightmare than he ever had before, but at the end, there it was: Shadow of Intent. There was no hope of saving his family, not even in his dreams.
The Half-Jaw had robbed him even of that.
Tem smashed a fist into his cabin’s metal wall, again and again, until he left a dent in the glossy turquoise panel and his hand was throbbing. You fool! It never mattered anyway. It was always just a dream!
For the reality was the Prelate hadn’t been inside High Charity when it fell. He had not seen his wife or his newborn child consumed by the Flood. Not with his own eyes.
Instead he had been at the helm of his cruiser, locked in combat with Sangheili warships in the space around the holy city. This fight was the culmination of his long years of training, the climax of the Schism. The Sangheili hadn’t expected such a vast and well-prepared mutiny, and in the moments before the human frigate infested with the Flood slipped into the dome, the Prelates and their Jiralhanae crews were winning. But then, one by one, the Prelate-controlled warships had peeled away from the battle to evacuate High Charity’s San’Shyuum.
What had been a perfectly executed surprise attack became a defensive scramble as the Prelates switched from trying to defeat the Sangheili warships to merely keeping them at bay while the San’Shyuum filled their own ships and slipped away. At first, the Sangheili let these vessels go. Then, as the threat of the Flood spreading beyond High Charity increased—as the Flood spilled down from the dome to the stalk where the rescue vessels had been docking—the Sangheili sent a message in the clear: ALL SHIPS ATTEMPTING TO LEAVE THIS SECTOR WILL BE DESTROYED.
The Flood had almost doomed the galaxy once before, and the Sangheili weren’t willing to let that happen again.
Shadow of Intent was the linchpin of this grim quarantine, and the Prelates had no ships that could match it one-on-one. The plan had been to overwhelm the carrier with multiple cruisers after the Sangheili fleet’s lesser vessels had been dispatched. But by then the San’Shyuum fleet had dwindled. And while Tem’Bhetek was still in the fight, his focus had shifted from how to destroy Shadow of Intent to how to save his family. When Tem received the Minister of Preparation’s desperate call for rescue, he quickly disengaged and hastened to the stalk.
As soon as the Prelate was docked and had a hard line to the city’s communication network, he had attempted to call Yalar. But the network had either been down or overloaded, and he couldn’t reach her. Waiting on the boarding gantry for the Minister to arrive, he had thought of abandoning his post, flying up into the dome. And he had just made up his mind to do it when the Minister’s Jiralhanae honor guard hustled him through the gantry airlock. Even though the shaggy warriors’ panic-stricken reek told him volumes about what had happened in the dome above, the Prelate asked the Minister: “My family. Can they be saved?”
Boru’a’Neem had leaned forward in his throne and grasped the Prelate’s arm. “The Sacred Promissory is lost!” His eyes were filled with a wild and consuming fear. “Nothing lives inside the city now except the Flood!”
This had been too much to take. The Prelate had shrugged off the Minister’s grip and staggered toward the airlock.
“They’re gone, Prelate!” the Minister shouted after him. “There is nothing you can do!”
Tem’Bhetek’s knees had buckled under the weight of this pronouncement. And the only thing that had brought him back to his feet—the only thing that kept him from kneeling there in the gantry until the Flood spilled down the stalk and devoured him as it had his wife and child—was the Minister’s solemn promise:
“Help me escape this place, and I swear, we will make the Sangheili pay for what they’ve done!”
At that moment, the Prelate had no real understanding of what the Minister meant. It would be many days before his mind could process anything but grief and he learned the full extent of the Sangheili’s betrayal. How they had failed to contain the Flood on the sacred Halo ring. How the Arbiter had turned on the Covenant by forging an alliance with the Flood’s Gravemind as well as with their human foes. By that time, the Prelate’s cruiser had joined a flotilla of San’Shyuum ships that had managed to escape High Charity. This brief rendezvous was joyous for some as they were reunited with loved ones thought lost.
But there was no news of Yalar or his child, and by the time the Prelate and the Minister had broken away from the flotilla and set their course for the secret Forerunner installation, all the Prelate’s hope had turned to vengeance.
There was a heavy knock on the cabin door, and the Prelate admitted his first officer, a thick-browed Jiralhanae with grizzled fur and one shoulder that stooped lower than the other. As the officer confirmed their arrival in a second Sangheili colony system and relayed the details of their latest scans of the system’s star, the Prelate silently donned his battle armor.
The deep black plates were light but strong, the finest creation of the Minister of Preparation’s foundries. Self-repair systems had removed all the damage the armor had sustained on Rahnelo. The Prelate smoothed the armor’s interlocking bands around his neck, removed a plasma rifle from his weapons locker, and holstered it in the small of his back. He removed his helmet from its stand and paused to look at his own reflection in the glazed surface of its chevron visor. Would you know me now, Yalar? Would you walk this path with me?
“The settlements have seen us,” the Jiralhanae said. “They are broadcasting distress signals on all channels. Do you want us to jam them?”
“No. Let the signals through.” The Prelate tucked his helmet under his arm and marched past the Jiralhanae toward the command deck.
Let the Half-Jaw hear them scream.
Shadow of Intent exited slipspace near the colony world Duraan, third planet of five in close orbit around its system’s red dwarf star.
Like its neighboring worlds, Duraan was gravity locked. One side of the mottled, orange-and-brown, arid planet was bathed in constant starlight, the other in perpetual dark. But even half-habitable worlds were rare, and Duraan’s wide-open spaces appealed to minor Sangheili families whose ambitions were constrained by the limited real estate on the crowded worlds closer to Sanghelios. Here there was ample room to lay the foundations of new keeps, and three generations ago, thousands of Sangheili had begun settling the shores of the spidery seas that spattered Duraan’s light side like ink blown on parchment. Far from the front lines of the human war, these settlements had enjoyed a quiet existence . . . until now.
It had taken the Half-Jaw three days to journey from Rahnelo to Duraan. While Shadow of Intent was tunneling through slipspace, the carrier had been unable to receive any communications. Now, with its titanic maneuvering engines pulsing with just enough power to stay two hundred thousand kilometers ahead of Duraan on its path around the red dwarf star, Shadow of Intent’s command deck rang with frantic transmissions from the planet’s many small settlements, all begging for assistance.
“Target in sight!” the Blademaster said. The old Sangheili’s fists were wrapped around the scuffed bronze railing of the command deck’s central holo-tank. He leaned forward and cocked an eye at the real-time image of Duraan that filled the charged air above the tank’s petaled projector. “He’s firing!” Icons blossomed around a glowing representation of the Prelate’s cruiser as it unleashed a volley of plasma. A few moments later, the loudest of the settlements fell silent.
“Intercept course calculated!” a Sangheili officer shouted from his post, one of many dimly lit alcoves spaced between thick beams that ribbed the command deck’s walls.
“All weapons locked and tracking!” another officer said.
The Blademaster tightened his grip on the railing, making his armored knuckles creak. “Shipmaster, I recommend an immediate attack!”
Rtas ‘Vadum sat in his command chair, the only seat on an elevated platform above and behind the holo-tank. Throughout Shadow of Intent’s exit from slipspace and the flurry of activity that followed, the Half-Jaw had been silent. Elbows bent on his chair’s worn metal arms, his ruined chin resting in the valley of his fists, Rtas stared hard at the holo-tank. When he finally spoke, it was quiet, almost to himself: “He could have glassed every settlement and been long gone before we arrived.” More silence, and then: “Why is he still here?”
“He miscalculated.” The Blademaster turned to face the Half-Jaw. “We killed plenty of Prelates at High Charity. They aren’t perfect.”
“And they killed plenty of us,” Rtas replied. As Vul ‘Soran chewed on that, the Half-Jaw rose, stepped down a ramp to the command-deck floor, and joined the Blademaster at the holo-tank. “Show me the scan of that star.”
With a few quick taps on a control panel embedded in the railing, the Blademaster shifted the image in the tank. Duraan shrunk to centimeter size, and the red dwarf became a giant. Shadow of Intent’s databases had grown stale during the human war, at least as far as Sangheili colonial scientific surveys were concerned. But Rtas had learned all he could about Duraan during their slipspace journey, and he knew the planet’s star was at its maximum, a period of extreme disturbance in its magnetic field resulting in frequent, violent stellar storms.
One of these storms was raging now. Two overlapping arms of fire, each one millions of kilometers long, lashed out from a confluence of dark spots on the star’s crimson surface. Invisible to the naked eye, radiation from these hellish upheavals was now racing toward Duraan in the form of light-speed particle waves—and similar storm fronts had likely been hitting the planet for days. Duraan’s magnetosphere would have shielded the Sangheili settlers from the storm’s worst effects. But their star’s distemper was the least of their concerns.
“He’s maneuvering. Heading for another settlement.” The Blademaster shook his head at the star. “Storm or not, we must attack!”
At full capacity, Shadow of Intent’s energy shields could withstand a punishing amount of firepower, much more than the Prelate’s cruiser could mete out. But Shadow of Intent was no match for the turbulent star, and even now the carrier’s warning systems were flashing in the command deck’s empty engineering cocoons. The officers who would have been stationed there had the ship been at full capacity had moved nearer to the carrier’s reactors to manage the slipspace exit. The Half-Jaw, the Blademaster, and two officers responsible for Shadow of Intent’s navigation and weapons were the deck’s only crew.
“His shields will be weak,” the Blademaster said.
“Ours will be, too.”
“We outgun him!”
“A fact I’m sure he clearly understands.”
The Blademaster lowered his voice from its usual roar. “I know you as well as I know my own sons, Rtas ‘Vadum. But by the time you puzzle out this Prelate’s plan, thousands more Sangheili will be dead.”
The Half-Jaw knew his old comrade was right. But as much as his hearts ached for the Sangheili on Duraan, he knew the choices he made in the next few moments would also mean life or death for everyone on his ship. And if he chose poorly—if he and his warriors perished and Shadow of Intent was destroyed—who would stop the Prelate then? How many other worlds would he leave burning in his wake?
Rtas took a deep breath and slowly rolled his armored shoulders. It’s not the battles you’ve fought that make you tired. It’s realizing you still have more to fight.
“Accelerate to attack speed!” the Half-Jaw said, loud enough for the officers to hear. “Keep the shields up as long as you can. The storm coming off that star will harm every exposed system on this ship!”
The Blademaster opened a ship-wide channel and relayed the Half-Jaw’s order to the rest of Shadow of Intent’s crew. Fully loaded, the carrier’s decks would have thundered with thousands of footfalls as those onboard rushed to their action stations. But now, except for the deep rumble of its maneuvering engines initiating a turn toward Duraan, Shadow of Intent was largely silent. It was a strange way to go into battle, Rtas thought, and the relative quiet only increased his unease.
Having walked into plenty of traps over the years, the Half-Jaw knew one when he saw one. The reason he was still alive was, by this point, he usually had a pretty good idea of the terrible trick his opponent was about to play. But while the Half-Jaw didn’t yet fully understand the Prelate’s scheme, he now possessed a new and vital clue.
He knew the cruiser’s name.
As Shadow of Intent completed its turn, the Half-Jaw keyed a series of commands into the holo-tank’s controls so it displayed a view from the carrier’s prow. He then opened a secondary perspective that showed a zoomed image of the Prelate’s ship.
“Kel ‘Darsam Silket . . .” Rtas said.
The Blademaster nodded in agreement. “Spear of Light.”
The cruiser’s name wasn’t painted on its prow like it would be on a human vessel. Instead the Half-Jaw and Blademaster had read the cruiser’s name in its distinctive shape, in the battle scars along its hull, for they had both seen the ship before.
Despite its illustrious name, the Prelate’s cruiser was of an older design that predated the Human-Covenant Conflict. It had been one of a group of ships the Sangheili had given to Jiralhanae chieftains whose loyalty the San’Shyuum wanted to reward. These “gifts” were common in the scramble to meet the human threat. At that time, it had made good sense to have as many vessels as possible in the fight, even though most of these ships had been deliberately hobbled—their major weapons and other systems disabled—to keep the prideful and cantankerous Jiralhanae Chieftains from becoming too powerful. No self-respecting Sangheili shipmaster had wanted to give up the possibility of frontline glory to train the Jiralhanae in the operation of these underpowered, surplus ships. And that was where the Prelates had come in.
They were considered purely technical advisors. Like all good lies, this was half true. But what the San’Shyuum left unsaid was that the Prelates, on the order of the Prophet of Truth, were secretly retrofitting the Jiralhanae’s ships and training them to attack the Sangheili. Contrary to what he preached, Truth knew only a blessed few could follow him on the Great Journey. And after the Sangheili committed the ultimate sin of losing the first Halo ring, they quickly fell out of favor. So the Prelates redoubled their clandestine preparations and, as much as Rtas hated to admit it, had the Flood not intervened in the battle for High Charity, the Prelates likely would have succeeded in carrying out Truth’s wishes.
“Enemy cruiser initiating a burn!” the navigation officer said. “He’s heading for the dark side of the planet!”
Three-dimensional space gave modern Sangheili shipmasters many more options for engaging their foes than when they clashed long ago on the seas of Sanghelios. But tactics still boiled down to the same age-old choice: hit your enemy head-on, or maneuver for advantage. Given Shadow of Intent’s dominant firepower, the Half-Jaw’s decision made perfect sense.
“Plot an intercept course the opposite way around the planet,” Rtas told the navigation officer. “We’ll meet him nose-to-nose.” Then, to weapons: “Shield status?”
“Eighty percent and falling, Shipmaster. Stellar particle count increasing.”
“No way to avoid the storm,” Vul ‘Soran said, “but that blade cuts both ways.”
The Half-Jaw nodded in agreement. “His reactors are weaker. His shields will drop before ours.” But he left unsaid: So why isn’t this Prelate running? Why isn’t he firing up his slipspace drive and avoiding a fight when the odds are so clearly in our favor?
Hundreds of capital ships had taken part in the brutal, close-quarters melee that was the battle for High Charity. In that fight, the Prelates had more total ships under their command than the Sangheili, but cruisers had been the largest vessels in the Prelates’ fleet. The Sangheili had Shadow of Intent and one other assault carrier, Eternal Reward, which should have tipped the balance in their favor. But in a surprise betrayal that began the battle, the three Prelate-controlled cruisers and five Jiralhanae destroyers tasked to support Eternal Reward opened fire at close range, damaging that carrier so badly that its surviving crew was forced to abandon ship. All the attacking vessels were annihilated save one: Spear of Light.
Rtas assumed this was the same Prelate who had commanded Spear of Light that day . . . the one who had gone on to disable or destroy six more Sangheili ships at High Charity—two of which were cruisers of superior type—before retreating to participate in the evacuation of the city. This Prelate had kept Spear of Light docked to the stalk until the Flood overran it, and then shot his way through the Sangheili blockade that had halted dozens of other San’Shyuum ships.
The Half-Jaw frowned, considering the puzzle of his opponent’s plan from a different angle. This Prelate is a fighter, and he clearly wants to go another round. . . . And then a vital, missing piece fell into place.
Rahnelo and Duraan were bait.
The Prelate had lured Shadow of Intent to these remote worlds just so he could isolate and destroy it—so he could finish the fight he started at High Charity. The Half-Jaw was now certain of this. He just couldn’t see how the Prelate planned to do it.
As Spear of Light completed its orbit around Duraan, everyone on Shadow of Intent’s command deck fell silent. The Blademaster marched a nervous lap around the holo-tank, hands clasped behind his back. Rtas did his best to ignore a painful twinge in his missing jaws.
The navigation officer broke the silence. “Target back in visual range! No deviation from intercept course!”
“Forward plasma cannons fully charged!” the weapons officer announced. “Ready to fire on your command, Shipmaster!”
Inside the holo-tank, Spear of Light emerged around the limb of Duraan’s dark side. Shadow of Intent’s cluster of intelligent circuits had been estimating the cruiser’s speed, trajectory, and other flight characteristics based on data processed before it disappeared behind the planet. This computational matrix was primitive compared to the artificial intelligences that ran most human ships. But now that the carrier’s many electronic eyes had reestablished line of sight, the matrix realized it had made one significant miscalculation—that the Prelate had done something unexpected while out of range—and it quickly corrected the error.
The Half-Jaw was the first to notice the change inside the holo-tank. “Look,” he said, pointing to the image of Spear of Light. “He’s turned his ship around.”
Squinting close to the tank, the Blademaster couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing: Spear of Light was now hurtling engines-first toward Shadow of Intent. “Why would he do that?!”
But Rtas had no answer. All he knew was that the Prelate’s trap was closing and he was running out of time to stop the jaws from snapping shut. “Shield status,” he growled. “Both ships!”
“His no longer register on the scan,” the weapons officer replied. “Ours are sixty percent forward, twenty percent lateral and aft—but falling fast! Optimal range in fifteen seconds!”
Shadow of Intent had seven heavy plasma cannons evenly spaced in a deep depression that ran port to starboard around its prow. The weapons could fire individually, or combine their energy into a single devastating mass that would annihilate the smaller cruiser. But there was a catch. Rtas needed to lower Shadow of Intent’s shields before he fired any of its plasma weapons, otherwise the shaped energy charges would detonate against the inner surface of the shield, wreaking havoc on his own ship instead of the Prelate’s.
This was standard procedure—a necessary dropping of one’s guard before mounting an assault. The Prelate would know this, would have planned for this. But the Half-Jaw had no more time to ponder, and he made the only decision that made any sort of sense.
Forget how tired you are and throw the hardest punch you can!
“Pool all channels into cannon number four!” Rtas shouted to his weapons officer. “Fire when ready!”
The command deck dimmed as Shadow of Intent’s reactors shunted power to the plasma cannons. The shields around the carrier’s prow scintillated and then dispersed. A split second later, a bright magenta streak of superheated gases wrapped in magnetic guidance fields shot out from the carrier’s nose. If Spear of Light had taken evasive action, the plasma torpedo would have altered its trajectory to stay on target. But the cruiser kept right on coming.
“Our shields are back up!” the weapons officer cried. “Five seconds to impact!”
The Blademaster leaned closer to the tank, his eager eyes glued to an icon that showed the estimated point of impact. “We’ll hit his cruiser dead astern and burn a hole right through it!”
But as the tremendous plasma torpedo neared Spear of Light, something strange began to happen. While the ship hadn’t deviated from its path, the torpedo’s fields sparked and flared as if lit by an invisible flame. Plasma vented quickly through widening weak spots in the torpedo’s fields, and it veered off course—only by a few degrees, but enough so that it only grazed the cruiser’s portside plating instead of slamming into its engine cluster.
“Minimal damage to target!” the weapons officer said.
The Blademaster pounded a fist on the holo-tank railing. “Impossible! How could we have missed?!”
“The storm . . .” Rtas said, as another puzzle piece snapped into place. He now pictured the red dwarf’s maelstrom hitting Duraan’s light side, churning against the planet’s magnetic field and then spilling around its dark side in violent, unpredictable vortices of highly charged particles. These whorls of radiation had torn away the torpedo’s fields just as they were slowly reducing Shadow of Intent’s shields—just as they had already disabled the shields around Spear of Light.
“Quick charge forward cannons!” the Half-Jaw barked. “Divert all necessary power from lateral and aft shields! Fire all cannons in sequence, quarter-second dispersal!”
Again the lights on the command deck dimmed. The cruiser shuddered as the cannons shot in quick succession. In the holo-tank, seven smaller torpedoes streaked toward Spear of Light, which was now less than ten thousand kilometers from Shadow of Intent. Already the torpedoes’ fields were shimmering wildly as the storm did its worst. But the torpedoes had much less distance to cover now, and Rtas only needed one to hit. . . .
Suddenly a miniature star erupted in the holo-tank as Spear of Light’s engines engaged, full thrust. The Half-Jaw watched three of his shots go wide, a fourth boil a deep scar across the cruiser’s back, and the rest evaporate in the particle furnace of the cruiser’s exhaust. Venting atmosphere and shuddering terribly as it decelerated at a rate far exceeding its structural limits, Spear of Light came alongside Shadow of Intent close enough to scrape the outer limits of the carrier’s portside shields—but these shields were gone now, their energy siphoned off for the Half-Jaw’s hasty volley.
Both ships were flying side by side at point-blank range. For the moment, however, neither could harm the other. The Half-Jaw couldn’t order another plasma shot without suffering splash damage to his own ship. And even Shadow of Intent’s less powerful point-laser batteries would need time to recharge.
“They’ll be running for their escape pods . . .” the Blademaster said. But his boisterous voice betrayed his age, and he stammered a little, trying to rationalize everything that had just occured. “The Prelate has no choice! If . . . if he stays where he is, we take him apart with lasers. If he moves, we use the cannons. Surely he knows he’s doomed?!”
But “escape pods” was all the Half-Jaw heard. For in that moment, Rtas felt his enemy’s trap snap shut, and he finally understood: The Prelate never intended to destroy Shadow of Intent. He planned to steal it.
“All hands!” Rtas shouted into a ship-wide channel. “Arm for battle! Close quarters!” Then, locking eyes with the Blademaster: “This Prelate will not take our ship!”
The escape pod blasted out of its mooring socket, and Tem’Bhetek slammed backward into his harness. A reactive gel layer inside his armor protected him from the punishing acceleration as the pod sped across the narrow gap of space between the two capital ships. The pod’s viewport blast shields were down, and it was running dark. But through the low-light optics in his visor, the Prelate could see the sharp outlines of five Jiralhanae crammed into harnesses around him, each one fully enclosed in deep blue, vacuum-rated armor that glimmered with reflections of the pod’s flashing status lights.
Behind the Prelate’s pod, nine more were launching, each with five Jiralhanae inside. These fifty warriors—the entirety of Spear of Light’s remaining crew—knew they had just punched a one-way ticket, that there was no turning back. But whatever nervousness the Brutes might have felt when they were near the miniature Halo was absent now. Hurtling toward an enemy, weapons in hand, these ruthless creatures were in their element. Tem felt a surge of confidence. We are going to make it inside that carrier and tear the Sangheili apart!
It had been an audacious plan. A single light cruiser against an assault carrier. Outmatched in arms and armor, the Prelate had known one thing for certain: Spear of Light would never survive the fight. But the genius of his strategy was accepting the inevitable destruction of his ship and turning it to his advantage.
The Prelate had visited Duraan’s system once before, on one of the many training missions that had kept him far from home. Back then he and his inexperienced Jiralhanae crew had been surprised at just how rapidly Duraan’s red dwarf star had degraded their cruiser’s shields. But the Prelate had filed away this miscalculation, as he did with all his missteps, as a tool for self-improvement. Years later, when he had wracked his brain for the best place to spring a trap, his memories of the red dwarf’s powerful storms, as well as Duraan’s small, poorly armed settlements, quickly sorted this planet to the top of the list.
Like most plans, this one had variables the Prelate couldn’t control, the biggest of which was the Half-Jaw himself. The red dwarf could only do so much to degrade Shadow of Intent’s defenses. For the Prelate’s gambit to work, he needed the Half-Jaw to throw everything he had at Spear of Light—to so desperately want to kill the Prelate here and now before he could do any more harm that he would be willing to expend Shadow of Intent’s many advantages in a single devastating blow.
The Half-Jaw had swung hard, but the Prelate was still standing. And now the odds were no longer in the Sangheili shipmaster’s favor. In a close-up fight, the Prelate knew his Jiralhanae could match any Sangheili. And as for the Half-Jaw? Tem’Bhetek fingered the hardlight shield projector and plasma rifle attached to his anti-grav belt. I will deal with him myself.
Five seconds out of the socket, and Shadow of Intent’s point lasers still hadn’t fired on his pod. This was good, because the pods had no significant shielding; even a single laser salvo would mean the end of the Prelate and his Jiralhanae. The pods’ primary advantage—the one thing that made them superior to standard boarding craft in this situation—was their straight-line acceleration. They were designed to get away from a dying ship very quickly. And a burst of speed was all the Prelate needed to reach Shadow of Intent.
Now more than halfway across the gap, the Prelate knew the laser batteries must be down, crippled by the stellar storm. Which left one last problem to overcome: the pods had no rams—reinforced docking gantries built into the noses of Covenant boarding craft that they used to lamprey onto a target vessel’s hull and cut their way inside.
Instead, the pods could enter only through a door that was already open. And fortunately for the Prelate, Shadow of Intent had one that was very hard to miss: the entrance to its portside hangar. An energy field barred the hangar, keeping the carrier’s artificial atmosphere in and all unauthorized vessels out. On a feed from his pod’s forward-facing camera that the Prelate had slaved to his visor, he could see the field’s telltale violet glow. But the hangar door was flickering, clearly weakened by the storm, and the Prelate knew their velocity would carry the pods safely through.
Fifteen seconds after the Prelate’s pod had burst from its socket, its smart circuits cut the main engine thrust and fired its maneuvering rockets, applying as much braking force as possible. A moment later, his pod was across the hangar threshold, still moving fast, but angled toward the deck. The pod landed hard on its belly, rocked onto its rounded nose, and screeched forward at an angle, shedding ablative tiles, stabilizing fins, and other exterior parts until it ground to a halt halfway across the hangar. As the Prelate wrestled out of his harness, he could hear the other pods hit and rasp across the deck, occasionally colliding with a bone-jarring crunch.
But when the Prelate blew the seals on his pod’s airlock and moved outside, more wobbly on his legs than he would have liked, he was relieved to see that all ten pods had made it safely inside the hangar. Their hatches exploded open, and the Jiralhanae emerged, some a little shaken, but all with weapons ready.
The bay stretched out before the Prelate, half a kilometer to the carrier’s starboard side, where there was another large energy-field door. To his right were passages to the carrier’s reactors and engines. To his left were vehicle repair bays and armories that led to Shadow of Intent’s ship-to-ground gravity lift. Beyond the lift were passages that spanned a graceful arc connecting the ship’s teardrop stern section to its hooked prow. In the dead center of the prow, protected by hundreds of meters of hull plating and honeycombed superstructure, was the carrier’s command deck. This was Tem’Bhetek’s objective, and if he could survive the sprint from here to there, this carrier would be his.
Bright green plasma bolts skipped across the hangar floor. The Prelate spun back behind his pod as the barrage spattered up and over the ship and then hit a Jiralhanae out in the open on the other side. The Jiralhanae’s chest plate buckled, his organs boiled and burst, and he fell backward with a mournful howl. As the Brute hit the floor, the Prelate closed his eyes and drew a deep breath . . . and his body did what it was designed to do.
Of all the Forerunner technologies the San’Shyuum had tried to unlock, genetic engineering had proved the most difficult. This was largely due to the fact that the Forerunners had refined their bio-enhancing tools and procedures for their own physiologies, not for other sentient creatures. Coupled with San’Shyuum taboos against doing anything that might further jeopardize their already limited ability to reproduce, research into this particular brand of Forerunner magic was completely ignored by all of their ministries save one: the Ministry of Preparation.
The Prelate slipped his left hand into his hardlight gauntlet and pulled it away from his belt. He activated the gauntlet with a forearm snap, and as its bright